


Uncertain Hours

by AftertheFall (you_took_everything)



Series: A Retelling [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Drugs, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Torture, agent!steve, regligious themes, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 21:07:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11882844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/you_took_everything/pseuds/AftertheFall
Summary: Part II, A“It seems we all need something to kill forto seek & claimto treasure till it screams in elemental darkto argue with the Gods over--” - yusef komunyakaa





	Uncertain Hours

**Author's Note:**

> Part II, A
> 
> “It seems we all need something to kill for  
> to seek & claim  
> to treasure till it screams in elemental dark  
> to argue with the Gods over--” - yusef komunyakaa

He could not see the sky. There was only a flurry of gray and white. 

His vision was like bloody static. 

_How you are fallen from Heaven...._

He knew he was in a bad way. 

_.... how you are cut down to the ground…._

All the while the snow piled up around him, clung to him, building up and up, smothering him slowly. 

White and gentle; quietly deadly. 

He had survived the fall only to die like this. 

_______________________________________

 

Bucky startled awake, heart beating wildly in his chest, breath caught in the back of his throat on the inhale of a scream, but he could not seem to get enough air in or out to make any noise at all 

He pushed his head from side to side frantically, it was about the only thing he could move.

He was strapped to a table. 

_No. No, not again, not ever again_. For a moment, he was back on that table with Zola, and panic threatened to override his every rational thought. He started to recite his name and serial number, but another scream tried to bubble up in his chest instead. 

Where was he? 

_The fall, the fall, the fall_ , over and over in his mind, uncomprehending. Like lightning from heaven, he had fallen.

Bucky tried to get his heart rate to slow, but his head was pounding and every inch of him felt like it was bruised, broken, or burning. The serum made him run hot, but he knew it was more than that. A punishing mental assessment, it hurt to think, revealed; his head felt like it was going to split in two, he was feverish and dehydrated, he was probably suffering from hypothermia, possibly frostbite. It was painful to try and swallow, mouth and lips as dry as the Sahara. 

Bucky felt like a neglected plant; anemic, one that had bleached the earth of all its nutrients already, but was still miraculously, _that was up for debate_ , trying to survive. A warm spot in the sun, that’s what he needed. His teeth had begun to chatter aggressively. 

Shivers began to wrack his body, but the restraints were tight around his shoulders, legs and arms.

His arms….

He tried to lift his head. It made pain bloom behind his eyes and his vision go dark around the edges for a minute. Bucky tried to take several steadying breaths. 

Both wrists were tied to the table; he couldn’t move them --

\-- But it was worse than that, when he looked. It was-- 

His left arm was gone; a bloody stump remained. 

“Oh.” 

God help him. He started to cry. Through everything he’d been through and everything he’d seen and this made him break down and bawl like a baby. This terrible thing.

He felt helpless and weak and pathetic, and for a long time he just sobbed self-indulgently, because he could allow himself this moment of weakness before the next step, whatever that might be.

_Humpty Dumpty and Satan both had great falls._

Incoherently, Bucky wondered where he fit into it all.

_______________________________________

 

The next time Bucky came to, his arm had been cleaned and bandaged. He no longer felt feverish, which meant that whoever was holding him had treated his infection. 

They hadn’t hurt him. In fact, they had made a point of patching him up. The knowledge did nothing to make Bucky feel better about his circumstances. 

He was still bound to the metal table. 

Several IV drips pricked his arm; someone had put them in while he slept. They made his arm itch, or maybe that was psychosomatic.

Bucky turned his head away from his left arm. He wasn’t going to think about it. He wasn’t, he wasn’t. Instead, he tried to focus on some of the details of the room. 

It was a surprisingly large space. The walls were tall, and showed a row of windows near the ceiling which had the reflective gleam of two-way mirrors…. A medical theater. Anyone could look down and observe the surgical procedures going on in the room from above. The entire room felt sterile: a lot of chrome, with just enough menacing looking medical equipment lying around so as to be extremely ominous.

An evil villian’s wet dream. 

Was that a saw he could see over in the corner? Vicious, with sharp, bloody teeth. 

Could whoever was holding him be any more cliche? 

His self-soothing induced humor wasn’t working particularly well; he tried, and failed, to pretend he wasn’t beginning to sweat. He still felt panic deep in his throat where a scream lay waiting. 

He wanted his mother. 

He wanted Peggy Carter to come bursting through the door in big combat boots to pull him off the table. 

He wanted to cry again. 

Anxiety gripped his bones, and constricted his chest. Who were his captors? He had been too feverish to remember, slipping in and out of consciousness. Where was he? Bucky wrestled internally; he wanted-- needed-- to find out who was keeping him here, but felt scared of the unknown. Better to know the reality though, it couldn’t be worse than some of the nightmare scenarios his brain was coming up with. 

He slipped into a restless unconsciousness. 

_______________________________________

 

The next time he woke up, he was in a concrete cell.

Whatever they’d been pumping into him through those IVs must have been strong enough to take out an elephant, he didn’t go down easy. 

He was irrationally angry with himself for losing time, for falling asleep, for falling…. 

It made his skin crawl to think of someone touching him while he was unconscious and so vulnerable. 

The cell was small; laying on his back with his arms-- arm-- outstretched above his head, toes pointed, he couldn’t touch both sides at once, but he thought it was only by a couple of inches. A Bucky and a quarters-worth, maybe. When he jumped, he could firmly brush the ceiling with his fingertips. Bucky strained to hear anything outside the room. The serum had enhanced his hearing, but even after his heartbeat slowed to a sniper’s calm, and he strained his senses, he still could not make out any sound from outside. The walls were most likely extremely thick; the thought made him feel uneasy and slightly claustrophobic. 

He wondered if this was their idea of psychological torture. Make it seem like they had forgotten about him until he cracked. 

The serum kept him healthy, but he actually needed a lot more food than the average male to keep up with his enhanced metabolism. He knew he could go about a week without food, but he definitely needed a source of water. There was a drain on the floor of his cell. This again, made him feel uneasy. When he pressed his ear to the grate, he could just make out the sounds of moving water; flowing, dripping, far _far_ below him.

_______________________________________

 

Eventually, three men came to move him to another room.

They sort of reminded Bucky of the three stooges. There was a small, balding man; Bucky decided to name Curly. There was a big man, a _really_ big man; he almost made Bucky feel small, and Bucky was no slouch, especially after the serum. Bucky decided to call the big guy Mo. The third man had deep laugh-lines at the corners of his eyes, that made him look like a squinty-eyed cowboy. His gaze was sharp, and assessing. Bucky named him Larry in his head. Starey Larry. 

Curly and Mo flanked him, one on each side, while Larry walked behind them; gun in hand. Bucky assumed he had it pointed directly at his head, because he felt an instinctive prickling at the back of his neck that screamed at him to duck. Besides, that’s what Bucky would have done in his place. 

Bucky’s mind raced as they walked. He figured he could definitely take out Curly, maybe even Mo, if he took them by surprise… but then there was Larry back there with the gun on his back. That was problematic. 

His scheming abruptly came to and end, his arm, his _fucking_ arm. He had forgotten he no longer had it. Each time he remembered was an jarring, unwelcome jolt of realization. 

Without his arm, he knew he didn’t stand a holy chance in hell. 

The cell they threw him into was smaller than the concrete cell, but unlike the concrete room, one of its walls was a row of bars, that Bucky could see through. His view wasn’t much; a dingy hallway that stretched to infinity for all Bucky knew to the left, and ended at a door not far on the right.  
He didn’t know why they had moved him, and wondered if that was part of it too, the not knowing what they were going to do with him. As they were turning away, after having securely locked Bucky’s cage, he heard Curly mutter something to Larry. 

He was speaking Russian. 

Allies! 

Was there a chance this was all a crazy misunderstanding? Bucky’s chest hurt from a desperate, aching plea that started in his gut and moved to his throat, like tears pricking at the back of his eyes, about to spill over. 

Hope had settled in his breast. 

Stupid fucking hope. 

He tried to speak, but his throat felt like old machinery, rusted from disuse. 

“Ally,” he tried to say it with some strength behind it, loudly so they would hear him. What were those few words in Russian they had learned in basic? 

“Товарищ.” 

He was sure he butchered that. 

He tried another one. 

“Союзник.” 

He was fairly sure that one meant friend, but again, he probably hadn’t pronounced it right.

Gabe had always been the one for languages. 

They must have seen some of the optimism in Bucky’s face. He should have been more careful not to let it show. There was nothing bullies loved more than crushing the life out of small, fragile things, like hope. 

They poked and goaded him through the bars. Then Mo began to bark at him, and Bucky didn't need to speak a word of Russian to know they were calling him an American dog, and that was probably the nice way of putting it. Bucky had never sympathized more with an animal in a zoo. 

Mo seemed really excited by the dog angle; he seemed a little slow. Bucky stood against the wall opposite the bars, and watched them, quietly defiant. Mo was making short abrupt sounds in Russian that were obviously meant to be commands: “sit,” and “speak,” and “roll-over.” He seemed frustrated by Bucky’s unwillingness to obey; but Bucky was completely unprepared when Mo reached right through the bars, and grabbed his wrist, catching Bucky by surprise with the length of his arm, his reach. Bucky had thought he was safe on the far side, but Jesus, Mo was fucking massive. 

Mo jerked, and Bucky came right off his feet; his knees hitting the concrete floor hard. 

“Сидеть!” Mo said. 

Curly came up beside Mo, laughing so hard he was bent over and slapping his knees. 

Bucky spit and caught Curly right in the eye.

He’d always been a crack shot. 

They opened the cell and kicked him until he finally did roll over. 

 

_______________________________________

 

Peggy, knew about the serum. 

She was one of the few who did. 

Maybe she’d think he could survive the fall, would send someone, or come looking for him herself. 

He just had to survive long enough for her to organize a search and rescue. They might already be looking for him. 

_______________________________________

 

His uniform had been ripped by whoever had found him and cleaned him up. Bucky no longer had the top half, no stars or stripes for him anymore, but he was still wearing the blue, kevlar uniform pants. 

Breaking the zipper off his pants, he used it to scratch a tally for each day he thought he’d been in captivity for on the wall. In this way, he attempted to keep track of time. He didn’t know how long he had been strapped to that table, but calculated it to around two weeks since he’d been captured. That sounded like just as good a number as any. 

He made a mark each time they brought him food, although he knew this couldn’t have been accurate. Sometimes it felt like they could have been feeding him almost two or three times a day, sometimes it felt much longer between each meal. 

Again, he wondered if this was a disorienting tactic. 

Then he wondered if they just weren’t too bothered by him, and kept forgetting he was even there. 

_______________________________________

 

The Russian Three Stooges were back. 

Bucky could have seen their ugly, sneering faces coming from the top of the Empire State Building. He usually only saw one at a time, as they brought him his food, now it was all three at once; a party. 

Mo had a newspaper clutched in his hammy fist; at the bars, he reached right in and shoved it in Bucky’s face triumphantly. It took Bucky’s eyes a moment to focus on the print, just at the tip of his nose, but then he took it in greedily, “ _JAPAN SURRENDERS, END OF WAR!_ ” Before the newspaper was torn from his sight. 

Curly, who was clearly the brains of this operation, ripped the paper from Mo’s hands, obviously displeased he had let Bucky see the good news. He began to hit Mo with it, like he was scolding a dog that had peed on the carpet, yelling at him angrily. 

Poor Mo didn’t look like he knew what his fists were for, and just stood there and took it. Starey Larry watched, as was his MO, and Bucky assumed felt some kind of joy watching his idiot compatriots make fools out of themselves. They were certainly the smartest guys Bucky had ever met sharing a brain cell three ways. 

Curly stopped beating Mo with the paper and turned back to Bucky with a maniacal gleam in his eye. He pressed the paper up against the bars of Bucky’s cell, pointing vindictively to a smaller headline on the corner of the front page: 

“ _Carter Still Missing_.” Then the subheadline, “ _Stark Heads Up Search For Valkyrie…._ ”

Bucky’s eyes jumped down to the small snippet of the story.

“ _SSR Agent, and speculated long-time sweetheart of Captain America…. Presumed dead, Carter was instrumental in_ ….”

Reeling, Bucky tried to process how much Peggy would have hated being referred to as his girl in an international newspaper, past the rushing in his ears. It was easier to focus on that rather than-- God. Peggy, dead. It just didn’t seem to fit. She’d been so technicolor in that dress, so full of life that last time…. 

He would break if he thought about it too hard. It was like his arm; Bucky’s mind just blocked it out. If it didn’t, Bucky might start thinking about how Peggy had been the only one to really know about him, Howard too, but with Howard searching for Peggy; no one would come looking for him now. 

No one was coming for him. 

His brain shut off. The Russians had long ago left him staring blankly at the newspaper they’d so kindly placed on the ground just outside the bars of his cell. 

_______________________________________

 

The chicken scratch markings on the wall of his cell trailed off just after eight weeks of captivity. 

Bucky knew more time had been lost, but without a watch, or a window, it was impossible to say.

He’d fallen-- the train had been, what? November? He figured he’d missed Christmas, and most likely New Years. 

_______________________________________

 

Starey Larry was back, without the usual posse, and he had brought another newspaper with him. He held the newspaper out to Bucky through the cell bars and waggled it at him as if to say, “ _come and get it_.” 

Bucky was wary. He assessed the man as he sat with his back against the wall. The newspaper hung in the space between them, a white flag, a seemingly guileless gesture. This man unnerved Bucky more than the other two. Larry seemed smarter, more cunning, and his eyes made him look too innocent. Bucky didn’t see a gun on him, but of course, he knew that didn’t mean anything. 

It was a stupid game of chicken. Bucky didn’t really have a choice; Larry had all the power here. Cautiously, Bucky reached out for the paper even as he knew he was playing right into whatever trap Larry had laid. Sure enough, lightning quick, Larry reached out, grabbing Bucky’s wrist, and pulled him _hard_ towards the bars. Bucky’s knees hit the concrete again. He tried to twist and brace himself, but reflexively reached out with his _left arm_. Completely unbalanced by his own miscalculation, and the strength of Larry’s grip, the momentum sent him crashing, face first into the bars. It hurt; but what stung the most was how stupid he felt for falling for the same trick twice.

Bucky struggled to straighten up, but Larry kept his painful grip on his wrist. Bucky’s face was still smashed into the bars, the man’s grip put an uncomfortable pressure on Bucky’s shoulder; one wrong move and Larry could easily dislocate it. 

Buck’s face was at level with the man’s crotch. Bucky could feel the hard length of the man through the scratchy fabric of his pants. 

Ah, Bucky saw then, and his stomach clenched with a sour, gut-punched feeling. 

This was a simple transaction. Larry would keep Bucky informed, bring him information about the outside world, but in exchange….

Larry’s hips moved insistently against Bucky’s face. 

It would be just like that time in the back alley of the pub. When Bucky had given that guy a suck job, and he’d almost come without being touched himself. It would be just like that; except that guy had touched Bucky’s face and jaw so tenderly as Bucky sucked him, he had petted Bucky’s hair, and spoken low reverent praises. 

Larry’s breathing was harsh as he unzipped his pants, He pushed them down a little, and pulled out his cock; it hit Bucky in the cheek, and he did not want to turn his head, he _wouldn’t_ , but the pain from his shoulder was almost unbearable, and Larry twisted a little until Bucky cried out. 

It would be just like giving that guy a suck job, and he could use this. His own breath was coming out fast and weak, like a small trapped animals. It was just an exchange; Bucky could at least keep up with the passing of time, with current events, if he just did this _one_ thing. 

Bucky wanted to scream, but there was no one to hear him; and after this _one_ thing, how many _more_? For as long as Bucky was trapped here, and no one was coming for him. 

Larry was impatient now. He pushed his hand into Bucky’s hair, and used it to yank Bucky’s head back, bending his neck agonizingly, putting his shoulder at an even more awkward angle to his body. Bucky tried to bite back the hoarse scream that tore up his throat and insides, but didn’t quite manage it. Larry seemed to like that though; he was leaking on Bucky’s face. 

Bucky turned his face and pretended to nuzzle Larry’s dick. The new angle took some of the extraordinary pressure off Bucky’s shoulder; then Bucky opened his mouth, and bit as hard as he could. 

Larry screamed like a girl. A pitch so high and panicked he broke fucking sound barriers. What a fucking pussy. Bucky hadn’t even touched his dick, well, barely. He’d maybe got just a little bit off of it; the thing was, it was so small to begin with. The sound of Larry’s screams brought Mo and Curly running, and a few other guys Bucky had never seen before. 

They beat him. 

For several eternities all Bucky knew was the sick cracking sound of boot against bone that split agony all the way into his skull. 

He pissed blood for two days before his body put itself back together again. 

He did not see Starey Larry ever again. 

Bucky considered it a win. 

_______________________________________

 

They threw Bucky back into the concrete cell.

Despite having felt like a sideshow attraction behind the bars, they really made all the difference in the world. 

Claustrophobia was a bitch. 

_______________________________________

 

Miraculously, he still had his boots. Desperation made him find easy amusement in anything. He played games with his shoelaces. 

Then wondered idly about killing himself with them. There was no place in the cell to hang the laces from. Bucky checked twice. 

He returned to playing cat’s cradle. 

_______________________________________

 

It was Zola. It had always been Zola. Bucky felt shaken to his core, an artillery barrage had never unbalanced him this deeply. How had he thought he had escaped him before? Even though he had he had he _had_. He had been freed. Peggy had come and pulled him off Zola’s table, and that had been _that _.__

____

__

Was it naive? Bucky felt hysterical. Had he been cocky? He couldn’t breath, he felt dizzy, and lightheaded. It was the worst kind of irrational panic; what if he had never been saved? What if Saint Peggy of Bucky’s Broken Bones had never come for him at all? What if he had always been flattened under Zola’s microscope? Chest cavity open and bleeding on some table in a Hydra lab. 

No, Peggy _had_ saved him. He knew. If there was one thing he could cling to, in the darkest of nights, it was his faith in Peggy Carter. He tried to find that steadiness in himself right before he took the shot, breaths coming slower, heartbeat steadying into a more sensible drum. 

“We had Russian spies during the war, don’t you see? The Russians kept you for me. You are in very good condition.” Zola’s eyes moved over his body in a way that made Bucky’s skin crawl. 

His eyes rested on Bucky’s left arm; where his left arm should be. 

“What is damaged can be fixed. Can even be made better!” Zola seemed positively rapturous at the prospect. “We will make you the new fist of Hydra! Then everyone will see that we are powerful!” Zola seemed swept away by his own visions. 

“You still lost the war, you scum sucking shitdick.” Bucky said, finding a little rapture of his own, by interrupting Zola's fantasies.

Zola’s expression darkened for a moment, but the fevered look came back to his eyes not a moment later. 

“We may not have won the war, but we managed to eliminate your precious fraulein.” Bucky felt a pang in his chest at the thought of Peggy. Dead. He hadn’t forgotten, never that, but like so many things in war, it was something you just placed aside because things still needed to be done, and you had to keep moving to survive. 

“And once more, I am still here, directly under their noses! I am finally able to conduct my experiments and pursue the projects that I wish to! And imagine, the SSR is footing the bill.” Zola was positively gleeful. “Now come. There is much work to be done.” 

_______________________________________

 

Bucky remembered the first time he had found himself on Zola’s table; even though, as a rule, he never tried to remember that time, but at least then there had been moments when Bucky had been allowed respite. 

There had been times when Zola had obviously been occupied elsewhere. He had to do Red Skull’s bidding, experimenting with the cube, inventing robot suits that Bucky had encountered on the train. 

This time it was different. 

This was concentrated. 

All of Zola’s attention was now completely focused on Bucky with a fervid monomania. Bucky felt like a fucking racehorse. Flogged. Foaming at the mouth. Lathered to hysteria, and the way Zola looked at him, like he was a prime piece of meat….

_______________________________________

 

“Happy Birthday! That is right. It is March tenth today.” Zola had him strapped to the table in the room with the saw. Bucky refused to call it the surgical theater even in his own fucking brain because he felt that would be pandering to Zola’s stupid histrionics. 

Zola seemed like he was in a good mood. Which, of course, meant only rainbows and puppies for Bucky. 

“I do not think it matters to tell you how much time has passed. Do you think your family has forgotten you by now?” Zola asked, almost airily, but he was really too viciously pleased with himself to pull it off. He was examining a particularly large, sharp looking scalpel. “Ah perhaps not yet,” he said, placing the scalpel to Bucky’s chest, “but they soon will.” 

He began to cut. 

_______________________________________

 

There were long stretches of time when nothing happened at all. Like they had simply forgotten about him. Bucky wondered if Zola had finally grown bored of him. There was always a thrill before the panic set in. 

Wouldn’t he rather go down fighting? Defiant, spitting in the face of his captors? 

Or be forgotten in some cell deep in the dark pits of neverwas. Never to be found. Never to be remembered. 

The claustrophobia set in.

A part of him. A soft, sniveling, cowardly part of him wanted to be left; to die here quietly and alone. Where there wasn’t any pain.

A part of him, and Bucky could never really settle on whether it was the most cowardly or the bravest part, wanted to kill himself. To end it quickly before pain or starvation could win out. 

Bucky knew time was passing. A lot of time. That scared him most of all. He heard Zola’s words ring true in his head. He knew his family would never really forget him, not in a meaningful way, but in an everyday way.... 

His mom and dad might move, the ghost of Bucky too powerful to stand. Bucky felt panicked about the idea of his family being somewhere other than his childhood home. Somewhere he couldn’t imagine them being. Somewhere he couldn’t follow. 

Becca would maybe have a fella by now, and Bucky wouldn’t be there to read him his rights. She would be reading and memorizing more poetry, maybe writing some of her own, and Bucky would never get a chance to read or hear now. 

They would all just keep moving through the everyday: chores, and church, and work and school, and each one of those days they would meet people and see different things, and learn something new and expand and-- but Bucky was just stuck here.

Stuck and alone.

Alone. 

Forgotten. 

All of this went through Bucky’s brain in loop. 

By the time Zola came for him again, he was almost grateful.

_______________________________________

 

A year passed in much this same way. Bucky only knew because one of the whitecoats was wearing a stupid little Christmas tree pin on the white of their lapel as they administered the drugs they had started him on. 

The drugs turned Bucky’s world upside down and his brain inside out. 

The pin was something homemade, like what a kid would make. It was an older woman with graying hair wearing it. For one split second Bucky thought about what her family must be like. Two beautiful children, a boy and a girl, a smiling husband, maybe even some grandchildren, and the warm glow of the fire as they sat around the Christmas tree at night. 

Then he imagined killing them. 

Every single one of them, right in front of her as she watched with horror in her eyes, blood splattered on her face.

He immediately felt sick with himself, but he still felt a twisted vindicated pleasure in the fantasy. They hadn’t figured out a way to punish him for thinking something. 

Yet. 

_______________________________________

 

They trained him to do everything he could do before, but with only one arm, how to shoot, to kill. Then faster and faster and better. Noncompliance was met with pain. Disobedience was not tolerated and he was punished over and over.

 _Just do it faster_. 

If he did everything quicker and better they wouldn’t hurt him. He became quicker. They forced him into conformity. Into compliance. They shaped him once more into a soldier. 

By the end, there was no end, Bucky could put together over a hundred and ten different kinds of weapons one handed faster than he had been able to load his rifle with two. 

_______________________________________

Another year passed. 

_______________________________________

And then another.

_______________________________________

Bucky came out of the darkness of his sleep-filled brain and fell straight into the darkness of his cell. Lost. Bewildered. What had made him wake?

A disembodied voice was speaking to him out of the dark; deep, gentle, and masculine. 

“No. Please don’t. Please no.” It was like a reflex now, how Bucky’s semi-conscious brain begged for mercy. He was tired. Exhausted. Hallucinations and nightmares could all just go to hell. Everyone could leave him the fuck alone. 

Zola and his whitecoats had been testing his stamina. They had made him run barefoot like a giant fucking hamster on a wheel for what had amounted to around three days and eight hours. 

If he lagged, or stopped, a whitecoat would jab him with a cattle prod. The current had run through the metal of the wheel, and ripped through Bucky’s body, and tore into his mind. 

He could not take any more hurt. 

“No. Please please please please ….” 

The voice sounded strained now.

“Let me help… Let me… you….” Still soft, but there was an urgency there too. 

Bucky faded out.

_______________________________________

 

Bucky lost what had remained of his blue Captain’s fatigues a long time ago, somewhere around mark four hundred and thirty eight on the wall of his cell. 

Now they just gave him loose, paper-thin medical scrubs to wear. For easy access. Most of the time he was missing either the top or the bottom. 

Just another indignity amongst millions

_______________________________________

 

“I have something for you.” Zola’s eyes gleamed. “A present.” 

_______________________________________

 

They don’t give him drugs when they put the arm on him. 

His brain tries to save him, shuts down halfway through the saw, but in a fit of hellish irony he comes back as they’re fitting the _monstrosity_ on. Screwing it into his flesh, collar bone and spine. 

It’s too surreal and the pain is like nothing Bucky has ever experienced. 

There are whitecoats all around him, splattered with-- He turns his head away and throws up on his right shoulder, gags, and then, thankfully, blacks out again. 

_______________________________________

 

The deep voice was back; overwrought, thick with emotion and shaking, but the hands on his face are steady and cool. Ice, from outside, is pressed onto the swelling near Bucky’s shoulder, on the bruising near his eye, then cupped to his mouth to drink. 

A blessing, God what a blessing, an angel. Bucky didn’t know whether the angel proved that he had gone mad or, if he was aware of the fact that it was a hallucination meant that he wasn’t crazy….

His brain was playing fucking fairy with some gorgeous angel he’d dreamt up. 

Bucky knew he was all kinds of fucked up. He also knew he never wanted this to end. As long as his brain was supplying him with this escape, this coping mechanism, he didn’t care how pathetic it seemed. Who was around to see? He was going to cling to it. 

_______________________________________

 

It seemed like they were pumping him with a new drug every week now. 

For a while, and a while was a while was a while and Bucky had no fucking clue, they had stopped trying to give him drugs. 

They had been stumped by the serum, but now they seemed determined to get the right balance. They wanted compliance. 

If Bucky had had a moment to just fucking _think_ , he might have thought that they were nervous. 

They meaning the whitecoats, Zola’s henchpeople, hench-scientists…. They were scared of him. They spooked sometimes when he moved erratically, their hands shook taking notes in the same room with him. 

They were training him in the most hostile way to be a killer, and he was getting pretty fucking good at it. Now they had given him the arm. It was a powerful thing. A weapon. They needed to tighten the leash on Bucky, and quickly. 

If Bucky had had just a split second to ruminate on his goddamn circumstances, he would have realized that the whitecoats were struggling to keep up with Zola’s vision, and were unprepared in terms of keeping Bucky fully in control.

Bucky could have taken advantage of this, except, he didn’t know what was up or down anymore. 

Some of the drugs made him sleepy. Some made him break out in hives. One drug made him unable to sit still, and he’d danced around his cell, panicked and anxious for what felt like days, unable to get his heart rate to slow. 

Some drugs made him scratch and tear at his own skin. Another drug kept him awake, wide-eyed and zombie-like for almost a hundred and thirty three hours straight. Then there were the drugs that made his skin feel like it was on fire, like his veins were burning him from the inside out, and it was all he could do not to bash his head in against the concrete walls to make it stop. He’d tried it once, but no less than eight security personnel had rushed in and grabbed him before he could do lasting damage. There was a drug that made him obedient, but slow. They hadn’t liked that. So it was back to the drawing board again, and again, and again. 

All the drugs scrambled his brain with a side of toast. 

The most common side effect of pretty much every drug they gave him was hallucinations.

_______________________________________

 

"Sergeant Barnes. Can you hear me, Sergeant Barnes?” 

It was like someone had thrown cold water on him. Bucky flinched awake, immediately tried to get up, but didn’t have the strength, and ended up on his ass in a graceless sprawl. 

“Sergeant Barnes-- 32557038--- Sergeant James Buchanan Barn--” He fumbled in the dark, trying to get upright again. Disoriented didn’t even begin to cover how he was feeling. He was back in Azzano, he was at home in his mother’s kitchen. He was in a bigger darker cell and his voice echoed in his ears like he had shouted, but his voice was weak; his brain felt weak. 

The lightbulb in his cell flickered on and off. Or maybe that was just how his brain worked now. 

But then, there was light. 

A ray of light. A slip of sunshine. An angel to guide him through the darkness. 

Clear blue eyes, long lashes, pink cheeks and even pinker lips, white blonde hair haloed around his face. It was everything Bucky’d never known to ask for, to want. But now that he’d seen it, he thought he had an idea what heaven looked like. Right here in his cell with him.

His hallucinations were really kicking it up a notch. 

“God, look at you, you’re gorgeous.” 

His hallucination looked startled at his words. 

“Sergeant Barnes…?” His angel sounded unsure. Sometimes Bucky wasn’t too sure himself. “My name is Steve Rogers. Agent Steve Rogers. I’m here to help you. Are you oka-- Okay, dumb question. Listen, I’m here to help you.” 

An avenging angel. An agent? Like Peggy? Bucky still felt muddled and foggy. The light in his cell was flickering again. No matter how hard he tried he couldn’t get a good focus on this guy. His eyes just kept slipping to either side of him, his vision was cloudy around the edges. 

A tingling feeling was starting up under his skin. It probably wasn’t going to be very long until he was scratching his skin raw, another side effect some of the drugs had on him. He’d already begun to scratch almost absentmindedly. 

“I can’t stay long. I barely made it past the guards this time. I’ll try to be back soon--.” 

“Listen, you come back anytime, sweetheart.” Bucky meant it wholeheartedly. He was starting to feel real tired though. He rolled over to face the wall, “If you ever need a cup of sugar or anything. I’m just a few cell blocks away.” He barely got out around a giant yawn.

Then he was out like the light in his cell. 

_______________________________________

 

Sometimes Becca was there in the concrete room with him. 

Bucky always tried to shoo her away at first. _Goddammit this is no place for you to be_. He wanted to yell and scream at her. Sometimes he actually did. 

“Go away!” 

“Get out of here!” 

She always had something snarky to say about Bucky’s situation. Always getting into his business and thinking she knew better than most. 

“Why don’t you just escape?” She said, her eyes wide and curious, but her tone was goading. 

Bucky wondered if she still looked the same as he imagined her. Whip-thin, big blue eyes too big for her face, and more freckles than you could shake a stick at. Probably not.

“Why don’t you just escape.” He echoed back, snotty and childish. 

Becca shrugged. 

“Why not? You’ve got the arm. You’ve got the strength. If you just thought for moment you could plan something.”

If he _could_ just _think_ for a moment. That was the problem. Coherence escaped him. Lucidity was merely a fever dream. Intelligibility was out to fucking sea. 

He gave her a helpless look. 

“I can’t.” He sounded pitiful, he knew. 

She shrugged again, this time as if to say, “your loss,”and disappeared. 

Then the walls began to melt. 

_______________________________________

 

One overzealous hydra scientist became fascinated by how far Bucky’s healing properties would extend. 

He’d spent a whole afternoon with Bucky.

He started by pulling out Bucky’s fingernails. 

Then watched, fascinated, when they had grown back fully within the hour. 

Bolstered by his success, he began pulling Bucky’s teeth out with excruciating attention to bringing Bucky as much pain during the process as possible. 

After the first three, with no sign of any regeneration, he’d moved on to Bucky’s toes. 

Zola had been furious. 

“You have damaged it! More than what can be fixed! What if you had tried to cut out an eye first! What if you had damaged its hands! Why didn’t you just try cutting off its trigger finger first, you slobbering imbecile!”

He handed Bucky a pistol.

“Shoot him.”

Bucky didn’t hesitate. 

He turned the pistol to the man’s head and squeezed the trigger, as simple as anything.

He barely had the chance to revel in the man’s terror before the light left his eyes. 

Bucky immediately turned the pistol on Zola and pulled the trigger, and pulled and pulled again and again. 

Zola laughed, delighted. 

“Very good!” He exclaimed. “You are responding well to the conditioning.” 

One Bullet. 

Zola had handed him a pistol with one bullet. 

One bullet and Bucky had wasted it on him. He looked at the now lifeless body of the man who had spent hours gleefully torturing Bucky, and he only felt hollowness.

One bullet. He could have killed Zola. He could have killed Zola and been done with him forever. Hydra would still have him, but Zola would be dead.

He could have killed--

He could have killed himself. 

One bullet to the skull. 

One bullet and he could have been free. 

“Take it back to its cell.” 

He did not put up a fight. 

_______________________________________

 

His angel was back, and he was angry. Not angry at Bucky, but angry _for_ Bucky. It was a good distinction, important, and it was nice. Really nice. Especially because Bucky was too exhausted to feel anything at all at the moment himself.

“Those bastards. Those rat _fucking_ bastards. Those goddamn, evil, rat-fucking bastards!” His angel paced back and forth.

It was a good thing his angel was such a petite little thing because otherwise Bucky didn’t think they would all fit into the room. His angel, Bucky, and all the anger like a living breathing thing; an anger so wide and deep his angel seemed to expand the walls of Bucky’s cell with it. 

His angel raged so beautifully too. 

His cheeks flushed bright with tempered heat. His hands curled into fists, knuckles glowing white with rage. 

It was like watching a sunshower. 

His mother had always said it meant the devil was beating his wife. Bucky had never liked that imagery for something so beautiful. Stormy and dark here, and a clear blue sky just over there, and a world of crystalline drops in between. Mesmerized, Bucky could not stop staring at the gleam of his angels hair, the serum let him see, even in the dim light of his cell. He really wanted to run his hands through it. 

It was nice having someone be angry on his behalf. Even if that someone was a figment of his imagination. 

His angel stopped pacing and came to sit next to Bucky, his back against the wall, knees up to his chest, just like Bucky was sitting. He sat on Bucky’s left side. The side with the metal arm. His angel didn’t seem to mind it. When he turned his head to speak, Bucky could see the color of his eyes had deepened into a dark blue, a dangerous shade. 

“It’s wrong what they’re doing to you. You know that, right? Peggy and I are working on a plan to get you out of here.”

Bucky startled. 

“Peggy Carter?” He rasped. 

Bucky was beginning to learn that his angel had a variety of sad faces, and he just wished he wasn’t having to get to see so many of them. This one was tinged with anger, but again, Bucky could tell it wasn’t aimed at him.

“Yea, Agent Peggy Carter. We work together, remember?” His angel said. 

Ha! Of course his angel knew who Peggy Carter was. She was one of the good ones. 

_He knows her because you know her. He’s only in your head. He knows only exactly what you know_. A cruel little voice in his hindbrain reminded him in sing-song. 

Bucky tamped that down viciously. 

“Jesus Christ those damn drugs....? Do you remember… name? Are you okay? …. Sergeant….” 

Bucky blacked out. 

_______________________________________

 

Maybe it was the next time he woke up, or the next time, or the time in between that, or before, but Bucky woke up next to his ever so occasional “rinse off.” 

Which here was a euphemism for, some tech placing a high pressure hose at the door to his cell and trying their damndest to turn Bucky into an overgrown, New York sewer rat with a second biblical flood. 

It was not the most pleasant way to start the day. 

It usually happened when some whitecoat had to get close to Bucky to give him his injections and would gag from the smell. 

The water was like ice, as a rule, and it was always that combination of cold and the pressure of the spray that never failed to punch the breath from Bucky’s lungs.

They usually left him gasping, half-drowned on the floor of his cell. 

It was only most days he wished he’d drowned completely. 

_______________________________________

 

If it wasn’t starvation, it was the drugs, if it wasn’t the drugs, they were performing experiments on him. All of which had something to do with bringing Bucky every kind of pain imaginable. 

In the surgical room, Zola had his whitecoats break every bone in his body to see how long it took him to heal. Zola watched from the viewing rooms above. 

They started with his arm. For a tiny, hysterical moment, Bucky was glad he didn’t have the other arm. He didn’t doubt for a second that they would break every bone in that one too, just to be “thorough.” 

They moved onto his legs next. As he had suspected, they broke both of his femurs to compare heal rates. Then each separately to see if that affected the time.

They worked their way through all one hundred and seventy-six of the bones that Bucky had left in his body. Then, just as they were revving up to do the whole thing all over again, Bucky had his first clear thought in maybe over two years.

 _No_. With _intent_. 

So it wasn’t fucking Shakespeare, they weren’t going to touch him again, hurt him again.

He made quick work out of five whitecoats before security overwhelmed him. It had been easy, one two three four five snapped necks. Bucky hated the arm, but he couldn’t deny the strength it gave him. Six guys were holding him down: two on each arm, and two on his torso, pushing their knees into his back. 

“Fuck all of you to hell and hope you rot.” Bucky was coherent, like the drugs had worked their way out of his system, but he felt choked with emotion, like two plus years of emotion were flooding him all at once. He was crying, he’d slobbered a little. Jesus, he was a fucking mess. 

Zola loved anything he did, especially if it was unexpectedly violent. He would clap his hands and laugh like a particularly demented child. 

Bucky hated it. Every form of rebellion was cause for Zola’s pleasure. 

Every time he lashed out at the guards, or killed one of the techs, any movement he made was carefully marked, analyzed, and delighted upon. 

“Very good, very good.” Zola murmured, emerging from the viewing room above onto the surgical floor. “We will need to up the dosage I think, to double, maybe triple the initial compound. He obviously burned through this dosage much too quickly.” Half a dozen whitecoats began dispassionately taking notes as Zola spoke. 

Jesus, where the fuck did Zola get these assholes. Their friends, okay, maybe colleagues’ bodies were lying all around them _dead_ , and these assholes were acting like fucking robots. 

Great, and now Bucky’s second lucid thought in over two years was some cracked science fiction conspiracy about how Zola had replaced his lackey’s with AIs or something; well, semi-lucid. 

“Take him back to his cell, and begin him on the new dosage immediately. We will continue this experiment again at a later time.” 

“Why don’t you take me back yourself, you sweaty armpit stain?” Not Bucky’s best work, but his head was killing him. 

Bucky’s only real way to rebel was the name calling. Childish? Hell yes, but Bucky felt a burning satisfaction when Zola’s face pinched every time he failed to address him with the “proper respect.”

Sure enough, Zola’s expression soured. It made Bucky’s day, putting a frown on his face. Zola walked to stand directly above where they were holding him down. 

“You can’t handle me on your own, you turd-licking son of a gun. You have to hide behind your filthy lackeys and pretend like you’re some kind of God; too mighty to get your toes dirty.” Here Bucky hacked up a big loogie and spit it right on Zola’s shoe. “You would be pissing your pants if all these people weren’t here to keep me away from you, you dog-fucking, godless sonofabitch!” 

Bucky jerked, and the entire mass of muscled bodies holding him down jerked with him. If he could just get up, if he could just get his hands around Zola’s neck. If he could just--

Zola placed his well polished shoe on Bucky’s face, and in a fit of cruel irony, when wasn’t it cruel? Bucky’s own glob of snot dribbled down onto his cheek. 

“You _will_ learn my name.” Zola said. 

_______________________________________

 

Zola had taken his brain and squeezed it like a sponge; an orange would feel better for being made into juice. His brain was nothing but bloody pulp. 

_______________________________________

 

“Asset. Who am I?”

“You are a shit-eating, slug-fucking, sweaty ballsack of a man that likes to wear his mother’s underwear.” 

They beat him mercilessly. 

His ribs cracked, and caved in. His fingers broke, his body bruised like soft fruit. 

On his hands and knees, hair lank and dirty, hanging in his face, he stared sightlessly at the ground. 

And smiled with blood in his teeth. 

_______________________________________

 

They took him down to his atoms and sewed pain into every molecule of his being. 

_______________________________________

 

Becca was back, offering her own brand of sympathy. 

“Come on, you big baby. Is that all you got? Remember when you got the stuffing beat out of you by Arny Davidson cause he pushed you down and called you a weeny in the fourth grade and you wouldn’t stand for it?” 

This was the part in the story where Bucky would always interrupt to say that Arny had been eating his spinach to grow big and strong because that kid had been a fucking giant. 

Becca gave him a minute to see if he was going to say anything, but he didn’t. Then she would always say, “Well, you didn’t stand for it. You got your butt shoved in the dirt, and he broke your nose too!” 

She continued undiscouraged. 

“Remember when you started boxing at the local gym? And I wanted so badly to try it too, so you trained me late at night when no one else was around? Remember I got that really good hit on you that one time, and you looked so proud of me, even through your swollen eye?”

Bucky could tell Becca really wanted him to join in. Pitch in his own two cents. He didn’t. She soldiered on. 

“Remember when some of the guys found out what you’d been teaching me, and cornered me by the old green grocers? And you came up just when they were really starting to push me around, made me feel like a fucking pinball. There must of been six of those guys from that gym there, all trained to fight same as you, but you leapt in there and pulled me out. You got the tar wailed out of you, sure, but you got me out safe. Well this is _nothing_ compared to that. You can have six well-muscled, practically boxing champs wail on you, but you can’t handle _this_?” Becca spread her arms in a universal, “come oooooon” gesture. 

Bucky continued to cry. 

_______________________________________

 

“Asset. What is my name?” 

“Master. Genius scientist. Doctor Arnim Zola.” All things he was being programmed to say. 

Zola looked briefly ecstatic. 

“...Cocksucker extraordinaire and ass-ugliest motherfucker this side of the Maginot Line.”

_______________________________________

 

He would do anything to make the pain stop. He thinks he says this out loud. 

_Pathetic_.

He doesn’t know if they said that, or if his own brain supplied him with the pejorative.

_______________________________________

 

“No, please don’t go. Please stay. Stay with me.” 

His angel looked horrified from where he was standing by the door to Bucky’s cell, like he couldn’t believe Bucky had stooped to begging so pathetically. 

Except then _he_ apologized. 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Of course I won’t go. I’ll stay. I promise, I’ll stay.” His angel reached his hand out, like a leaf falling to the earth; a little shaky, but gentle. “Can I? I won’t hurt you. Is it okay?” 

Bucky turned his whole body into the touch. It had been so long, since someone had touched him without the intent to hurt him. Bucky tugged and pushed a little, and suddenly he realized he had pulled his angel to the ground and had practically crawled into his lap. Bucky was the fucking poster child for give an inch and they take a mile. He had his arms around his angel’s skinny little waist, and…. He could feel him…. Really _feel_ him. Like he was actually real. They had him on the good drugs this time. 

That same shaky hand that had reached out to Bucky came up to his head; uncertainty made it hesitate. Then, after what seemed like a bit of internal deliberation, his angel ran his hands through the rat’s nest that was Bucky’s hair now. 

Bucky wanted to moan. He practically melted into a puddle, just sank right into his angel’s body, and practically through the floor underneath. Take him to fucking heaven right now, he could die happy. Bucky felt overwhelmed and deeply, deeply grateful. 

His angel was a little bony, but pretty comfortable once you worked around the angles. 

He smelled... human. Like sweat, but with a underlying clean soap scent. Bucky wasn’t about to relinquish his nose’s position, currently in the junction between his angel’s shoulder and neck, just because that was maybe a little creepy. Dear God, his angel’s nose was probably getting the full frontal assault of the last few years of Bucky’s sweat, blood, and tears, but _nothing_ could make Bucky move right now. 

-

He woke up again. It must have been that same night. Day? His fingers clenched reflexively around fabric. His angel was still there, flesh and blood beneath Bucky’s hands. 

“Help me, please. Help me.” If his angel was there, if his angel was really there, and real and _real_ , “Please help me. Please….” 

In a whisper, and so so mournful. 

“I’m trying.”  


_______________________________________

 

A while passed. 

And Bucky’s definition of “a while” was, “a fucking long ass bit of time.”

But what did Bucky know?

It could have been minutes.

_______________________________________

 

Bucky took stock. He was face down on the ground of his cell. There was a pressure on his back, a kneading sensation, which was, pleasant….

“Are you awake?” His angel’s deep voice sounded almost cheerful. Bucky worked up just enough energy for an affirmative grunt. In the background of Bucky’s muddled thoughts, his angel’s deep voice gave off a long string of reassuring words and sounds. It was a false cheer. A bustling cheer that brooked no room for argument or dissent. Bucky could hear the strain in his angel’s voice even as he continued to chatter. He was probably trying to keep Bucky’s mind away from the pain. 

His angel did something, something fucking _magical_ with his hands, kneading a particularly bad knot in Bucky’s left shoulder, where the tender flesh met metal in an angry, ugly looking divide. Bucky turned to jelly; three years of built up tension dissipating with each deft touch. 

Bucky’s moan was muffled a bit into the floor, which he was only vaguely aware enough to be grateful for. 

“There, that’s it.” His angel muttered absently, putting more pressure on the spot, digging into Bucky’s poor muscles with distracting strength. 

“I used to do this for my mom. She was in a lot of pain in the end, and I would do this for her sometimes. I knew it helped. She was a nurse in a TB Ward. One of the bravest people I ever knew. You kind of remind me of her a little….” His angel continued to talk, and Bucky drooled onto the floor and listened, straining to stay awake for even a second longer. 

_______________________________________

It was one of those times when Zola seemed to be busy elsewhere. Bucky was alone for long stretches of time. The drugs kept him busy though, 

Bucky was convinced there was a spider in his cell. In here, somewhere. Always just outside his line of site. _There!_ A hairy leg. It was on him. He tore at his scrubs and hair. 

-

Those little strings of fairy lights on his eyeballs strobed technicolor paths across his vision, making murals out of the plain concrete walls of his cell. 

-

Sometimes Becca was there, but she could be a really annoying brat sometimes. 

-

Sometimes Bucky was violent. So violent it scared him when he came back to himself afterwards, his breath heaving, hair hanging snarled in his face. Gauge marks and scratches littered the walls of his concrete cell. He had tried to punch his way through the wall with the arm once, a small crater remained, but they had tranqued him; probably more worried that he would do lasting damage to the arm than to himself, and he hadn’t tried again. He could never really distinguish whether the violence stemmed from the drugs, or from the years and _years_ of built up anger and resentment. 

_______________________________________

 

His angel was back, his tone uneasy, even though he was trying to not let Bucky see. 

“They’re making something, Sergeant Barnes. A machine. I think--.” 

Bucky tried to swallow back the bile that pricked his throat. The last time Zola had made him something, it had been the arm. 

“Listen, I know I’ve said this before, but Peggy and I think we might have figured out a plan. A good one. It’s just we have to make _absolutely sure_ everything is ready. Peggy wants to make sure-- She’s afraid you might be volatile. That you might be dangerous to me-- I’m ready, but Peggy wants to wait a bit longer…” His angel was almost babbling now. It was a strange mix of reassurement and regret. Bucky was used to strange mixes. “... but now with this machine….”

They were making something. _A machine_. For Bucky, and Bucky can’t help but feel the dread pool in his stomach at those words.

**Author's Note:**

> Part II, B coming soon! And maybe a Part III.


End file.
